It's not that "everything's your fault" though. It's that improving your life is your own responsibility, regardless of whose fault your circumstances are, because nobody else cares as much about your life as you do. It's not a statement about avoiding interdependence, it's about the fact that sitting around waiting for circumstances to change or for someone else to help you is not a practical way to improve your life because most of the time nothing will happen. I think of this is a variation on the serenity prayer, which is the single best piece of advice in the English language in my opinion: {insert higher power here} grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. AA is full of clichés because they're true.

Yes and no. There are absolutely baseline random factors that have a big impact on your life. You could genetic predisposition to something unpleasant, be born into Money, have a skin tone that’s discriminated against, have birth citizenship in a nation with a great social safety net. Lots of factors that can go either way.

We underestimate the importance of positive factors and overestimate the importance of negative factors. I think the best approach to dealing with this is:

1) practice Gratitude for the foundational positives

2) accept the foundational negatives

3) Embrace your sphere of control and deliberately choose compounding actions that build on the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses to improve your life.